Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
33. Is Truth Easy or Difficult? Metaphysics II: Three Ways It Is Easy, Two Causes of Difficulty, and Gratitude to Predecessors
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7b-wisdom-2006-colorado/033-is-truth-easy-or-difficult-metaphysics-ii-three-ways-it-is/

[0:00] Go further, Aristotle is going to manifest the truth of his answer and so on. It might be because we're influenced by the moderns to point out that a modern might object and say, "Well, Aristotle, in asking whether it's easy or difficult for man to know truth, he's assuming that man can know truth at all." Yeah, I should ask is it possible. or impossible? Yeah. So they might say there's a question before this question, namely whether man can know truth, right?

[0:40] And only after you've answered that question, if you have answered it affirmatively, can you say, "But now, is it easy or difficult for man to know the truth?" Right?

[0:52] Now, is that a good objection or not? Is Aristotle mistaken or out of order in not first considering the question whether man can know truth before he considers the question whether it's easier or difficult for man to know truth?

[1:18] It's obvious. Yeah. Or is it a case of like in the second book of Natural Hearing, where Aristotle is explicit about those who might think there was a question before the one he asked, and therefore criticized them for not asking it and answering it first. If you recall, in the second book of Natural Hearing, Aristotle asked the great question, "What is nature?" Right? You say some of these things out here are by art, like the buildings and the cars, and some are by nature, right, like the trees and so on.

[1:59] What What is nature? He asked that question, right? And eventually, he answers the question, "of What nature is? What that cause is, and how it differs from art and so on." When he gets through with all that, he touches upon the possible objections. Somebody might say, "Well, Aristotle, you should have asked first, 'Does nature exist? ' Before you asked what nature is, huh?" And you know the text Aristotle says,

[2:30] "It's obvious, huh, that nature exists. What's not obvious is what it is, huh? Just as it's obvious that you have a soul, a cause of life within you, what's not obvious is what it is, right? " Of course, we're struck when we read the De Anima because Aristotle and the Greek philosophers before him they're all asking the question, "What is this soul?" Right? But none of them asked, "Does the soul exist?

[3:04] " Okay, and if by the word "soul" you mean simply the cause of life within living bodies, well, it's obvious that there is a cause of life within living bodies, and therefore, if you ask the question, "Does it exist? " you'd be talking about what you know as if you didn't know it. What is known to itself is if it had to be known to something else.

[3:30] What's the same way about nature? There, he doesn't in the De Anima there stop upon that possible objection, right? But he gives us a solution to that possible objection in the same way that he solves the objection that shouldn't I have asked first whether nature exists, right? Well, it's obvious to us in our sense experience that nature exists. Then to ask the question, "Does nature exist? " is to act as if you didn't know what you didn't know.

[3:56] Aristotle has such a mixed-up mind; is possible, right? Because Socrates had shown that men think they know what they do not know, and therefore they mix up what they know with what they don't know. So the possible reverse mistake could take place that you think you don't know what you do know.

[4:23] Well, if we pose the objection, Aristotle, I think he would say that it's obvious that man can know truth. Part of that would be because what of the axioms, right? We know that the whole is more than the part, right? We're sure about that, and so it's obvious there are some things that we do know, huh? That we can know truth, and as Thomas Aquinas says, the existence of truth is obvious, right?

[4:59] Either truth exists or truth does not exist, right? Truth exists, then truth does exist. But if truth does not exist, then it's true that truth does not exist, and therefore, truth exists, right? So there's no way out of it, huh? I like to say sometimes, you know, statements exist. That's true. Of course, it almost you know shows itself, right? Because it is a statement. But if someone says statements do not exist, he's made a statement, right?

[5:30] So he can't deny that statements exist without making a statement. So you're going to try to prove that statements exist. Of course, apart from that, you know, from experience, I've experienced statements all my life. Always putting statements together. So

[5:49] in the *Peri Hermeneias*, Aristotle thinks out what a statement is, but does he ask the question, you know, do statements exist? No. So. It's obvious that man is able to know truth. What needs to be discussed is, well, how is he towards knowing truth? Is it is an easy thing for him, or a difficult thing for him, or is it in some way both of them? And Aristotle thinks in some ways it's both.

[6:23] Right? Do you follow me? Makes sense. Okay. So I thought it was good to touch upon that because you're influenced by the moderns, and you might think that that question should come before. But that's assuming that you don't know that man can know truth. But it should be obvious to you that man can know truth.

[6:48] What if somebody objected and said, "Well, you can know truths, but only ones that aren't worth knowing." Well, yeah, but that's not, you know, you know, the that's not the same kind of questions here, right? Okay. But but in a sense that that that's involving almost in a way how man is towards knowing truth, right? Okay. Now. In unfolding the truth of his original statement, Aristotle is going to emphasize something differently in both.

[7:31] In saying that truth is what difficult, which all the other professors are handsomely, Aristotle is going to not emphasize so much, or develop so much, or try to show you might say that it's difficult because that's pretty clear. But the profundity is going to do is to explain why it's difficult, right? What is the cause of the difficulty? That's what needs to be elaborated as far as the difficulty of knowing truth is concerned, right?

[8:08] It's not so much the question, you know, is it difficult? Because everybody seems to more or less admit that. But why is it difficult, right?

[8:22] But as regards the more controversial part, that the knowledge of truth is easy in some way, right? There, in what way is it easier? Needs to be manifested, right? Because at first you might say, "What do you mean easy? You know, I don't see any easy in this knowing truth. I can't find it or something, you know." Okay.

[8:50] Now he takes up first the more controversial thing: in what way it's easy? Of course, maybe he does that first because he wants to encourage you, right? And then you have plenty of caution, and you find out the reason why it's so difficult. But that's why I preface this with the discussion of the dispositions, right? Because it seems that Aristotle is writing with regard not only to the truth, but with regard to what the dispositions of will of the student.

[9:26] Now, what he does, he says, the sign of this is that although no one worthily, Axios, worthily, seems to attain to the truth, right?

[9:39] And then he goes into three ways in which the truth seems to be easier. They don't completely miss the truth, huh? Okay. But each says something about nature, meaning reality, huh? Okay. This is the first way in which truth is said to be easy. You can't go through life without what? Saying something true. Yeah, without saying something true, without saying some truth, however little or insignificant it may be, you say.

[10:19] My stock example is the guy who makes McDonald hamburgers all day long, week after week, right? Well, he's got to see some truth about hamburgers, right? That they contract, maybe let's say, when they cook, you know, or they the grease goes out of them a little bit or something, you know.

[10:39] So, whatever you do in life, whatever your occupation might happen to be, if you're a carpenter, you're going to see some truth about wood, I would think, huh? And if you're a seamstress, you're going to see some truth about thread or something, right? If you feed the the animals there, you're going to see some truth about the cow or the pig or whatever other animal you're you're dealing with, right?

[11:04] If you have a pet dog or a pet cat, you're going to see some truth about cats or dogs, right? So he's saying, in that sense, it's easy for man to know the truth. He can't miss it entirely, right?

[11:19] Okay, that's one way, right? And someone might say, "Well, okay, you're bound to see some little bit of truth, you know, but no, what's the big deal about it, right? " Okay, and then he comes to the second way in which a knowledge of truth is easy, even a large amount. He says is in some way easier. Now, how is that so, huh?

[11:48] Well, you might see one little bit of the truth, and someone else sees some other little bit of the truth, and someone else sees another little bit of the truth, and by bringing together the bits that different people see, you get a certain what? Large amount, huh? And the example I take sometimes is that of I've seen different organizations like to make up a cookbook, and maybe your mother or your grandmother or your aunt has recipe that's famous in your family.

[12:20] Whenever time he or she made it, right? You know, everybody seemed to love this thing, and I say now, if your mother or grandmother or aunt or somebody has a particularly good recipe, would you bring it in, you know? And then you do the same thing, you know, and so on, and you bring all the recipes together, and all of a sudden you got the whole what?

[12:41] Cookbook, huh? There's this guy that's on Boston TV there, you know, and he has people sending in the recipes, and then he writes a book, and he has a whole book, right? It's easy, you know. And he used to say, you know, you know these professors in the big universities, right? They kind of abuse, in a sense, the the the graduate students, huh? You may have you do some little bit of research, you do a little bit of research, you do a little research, and then he brings it all together, and he gets the credit, you know, for his big book, huh?

[13:13] Easy work, right? But I also sometimes quote my mother's, you know, on a Saturday morning when there's housework to be done, you know, and. Her motto was, you know, many hands make light work. You know, and if you all chip in, you know, it will get it all done, and it won't be too hard, right? And that's a common thing, right? There might be some piece of furniture, like the piano there or something, that'd be rather difficult for me to lift, right?

[13:40] If you have ten guys around there, each guy lifting up, it's easy to lift it, right? In the same way as truth, right? It's difficult for me by myself to get much truth, right? But through the efforts of many, we can get a large amount of it, huh? If Burke was the geometer in his lifetime, discovers one theorem of geometry, big deal. But if you got fifty guys working geometry, now you got fifty theorems, maybe, huh?

[14:08] So Niels Bohr has an essay just on how no one of the scientists invented the quantum theory, right? But he gives, you know, this man saw this part of it, and this guy then added that part, this guy added that part, and all of a sudden you had this wonderful theory as a whole. So that's a second way in which not only knowledge of truth is easy, but a large amount of truth is in some way easier through the efforts of many, huh?

[14:44] athroizomenon gathered together, right, a certain amount of it, huh? And then the third way. That it seems to be like we say in in the proverb, veritably, huh? Who misses the door, right? Okay. Now, apparently, the Greek proverb meant that you walk down the streets of Athens there, and you see these big houses there. You can see the door, right? Entrance to the house. But what's beyond that door, you can only guess, right?

[15:34] At first, huh? You have to go through the door to know what's inside. So if you just guess at what's inside, you could be easily mistaken, right? But nobody misses the door. That stands out, right? Well, the door is like the what the gateway, the beginning of what something, huh? And Aristotle is saying now, there is some part of the truth that everybody sees. It's that easy, and that's what you find in natural understanding in the axioms, huh?

[16:11] So everybody sees that the whole is more than the part, right? And if somebody says I don't see that, then we'll give him part of his salary this week, right? And part of the car he bought, and so on, and he'll rave and rant that he's being cheated, right? Because he knows the whole is more than the part, right? I notice the difference between the third thing and the first thing, right?

[16:36] The first thing was saying it can't go through life without seeing some part of the truth, however small and insignificant it might be, right? But the part you see might not be the part I see, right? Because you had a pet dog and I had a pet cat, or you had a pet parrot or something, right? So we all saw a different part of the truth, some little bit of the truth, okay?

[17:00] Or you being a carpenter and he being, you know, McDonald's hamburgers, you know, you know something about hamburgers and he knows something about wood or vice versa, right? Okay. But now there is another way in which truth is easy. There is some part of the truth that everybody sees the same part, right? And that's a separate thing to be noted, huh?

[17:26] Okay. So we all see that men exist, right? We all see that the whole is more than the part, huh? And that's the doorway to knowledge, huh? Was it Regnery that had their series there what do they call it, the Gateway editions? Is that Regnery? Huh? Did you say Red Preen? Henry Regnery, the Regnery Company. Wasn't it one of their series called the Gateway editions? Why they call them Gateway?

[17:54] Because that's the beginning, right? The the way in, you might say, huh? So we're still saying the way in, what you first know, everybody knows that the axioms are known by everybody, huh? There's two I don't know So here are then three ways in which it's easy for a man to know the truth, right? He can't avoiding seeing something rather in life, right? Whatever it may happen to be, whatever his station or whatever he's doing, right?

[18:24] And then in another way, even a large amount though is possible through the efforts of many, huh? And then there's some truths that are so easy that everybody sees it, and that's the kind of truths we have in the axioms, huh? Everybody to some extent sees those, huh? Is his big thing. The thing that he says that nobody else has said that those things that everybody sees are the beginning for wisdom.

[18:53] Well, the beginning for all of our reasoned-out knowledge, right? As you learn in the in the Posterior Analytics. But now, if you want to come back upon these three things, right? You could say the third thing he talks about is about what is the foundation of our knowledge, right? The truths that everybody sees and cannot avoid seeing, they are the fundamental truths, right? Now, in addition to those fundamental truths that are the foundation of our thinking, there are parts of the truth that one man sees that another man doesn't see, right?

[19:31] But we can gather them together, right, and then build on the foundation a whole, what? large amount of truth and so on, huh? So in Euclid's Elements, there are statements at the very beginning like the whole is more than a part and all right angles equal. It's kind of obvious, and then you build upon those, right? But you build upon them truths that one man at a time saw, but through the accumulation you built them up, right?

[20:03] So that's the way the three are what related, right? The third thing he talks about is the foundation, and then the first and the second refer to building on that foundation eventually a large amount of truth, huh? So that's that's very encouraging, isn't it?

[20:24] I'm hopeful, right? But now let's balance that with some caution and not with just with the caution. That truth is also in some way difficult, but let's go more deeply into an understanding of the difficulty of that,

[20:43] and that is by going into the cause of the difficulty in knowing these things. And Aristotle is going to say that first of all, or bring out, that there can be two causes of the difficulty in knowing,

[21:08] and you can make a similar distinction if you talked about other activities like burning, as Thomas says, right? Thomas says, you know, it might be hard to set the wood on fire because you have a little fire to use to set it on fire, or because the wood is what wet and therefore resists being set on fire. So

[21:40] the difficulty, says in knowing, can be in us, right? Or it can be in the thing we're trying to know. You could do something like this with love, right?

[21:57] Something it can be difficult to love, and what's the cause of the difficulty of loving something? Well, it can be in the thing itself if it's not very lovable. I find it difficult to love rock and roll music, right? But is that a defect in my heart or a defect in the thing?

[22:22] Or I take sometimes a more obvious example, even than that, even my students might accept. I find it difficult to to love cancer, right?

[22:33] Yeah, but is the cause of why it's so difficult for me to love cancer is that in my heart something wrong with my heart? No, I think there's something wrong with my heart if I love cancer. The difficulty in loving cancer is where? In the thing itself, in the cancer, right? Okay. But now, if I find it difficult to love the common good,

[23:04] easy for me to love the private good, but the whole is better than the part, so the common good is much better than the private good. And why do I find it so difficult to love the common good? And I find it easy to love the private good.

[23:26] Well, there the difficulty seems to be in my heart. The what is less good, I love more easily than what is more good, huh?

[23:39] It's not that the common good is not much of a good; it's a much greater good, huh, than the private good, huh? So the difficulty I have in loving the common good must be in my heart, right? And this is the difficulty we have in loving, say, God or something like that, right? Most lovable, but the difficulty must be in our heart. That what's most lovable we find most difficult to love, huh?

[24:11] As we should, huh? So I might find more difficult, say, to. I found it easy to love candy in my life, but it's more difficult to love wisdom. But is why it is difficult in loving wisdom, right? Seems to be in me, right? Rather than in the thing, huh? So Aristotle is saying, difficulty can be in two ways, huh? Either in us or the things. Now, here you can bring in again what we learned in the ninth book, because something is knowable because it is in what act, right?

[24:58] So the more actual something is, the more knowable it is, huh? Why the less actual it is, the more potential it is, the less knowable it is, huh? You can kind of see the reason why.

[25:18] The difficulty of knowing some things might be in them, and that's because they're very potential in the passive sense, huh? And this is the difficulty we have in knowing the first matter. You know how Augustine speaks of that, huh? Almost like a Platonist, you know. If I could say it's something that is nothing, or nothing that is something, that's what I would say. He knows that's not right, you know, but he's deeply what puzzled about the first matter, huh?

[25:50] And you know the difficulty you have in trying to understand time, huh? Because time hardly exists, huh? The past doesn't exist, future doesn't exist, and is there really any time in the now? No time really there. Is any time there together? You'd have the past and the future existing together. The same thing is really true about motion, huh? That hardly exists, huh? So some things are difficult to know.

[26:25] Because of their potentiality, or you could also say maybe, in some cases, because of contingency, right? Okay. How the voters going to vote, right? Or maybe they, you know, aren't actually determined as to how they're going to vote, huh? So you can't really know how they're going to vote, huh?

[26:50] But the immaterial substances, as Aristotle talked a bit, the simple ones, he talked about in the ninth book, they are much more actual than the material substances, and the first cause, being pure act, is most knowable of all. But those seem to be even more difficult for us to know than motion and time, right? So Aristotle is saying, although you have a difficulty in both ways, we seem to have even more difficulty due to the weakness of our mind.

[27:21] And of course, this goes back to the fact that our mind, at first, is a bit like matter; it's purely an ability, right? And only gradually goes to an ability to act. So the things that are most actual are the things we're going to know, if at all, last. And the things that are more less actual, like motion, right? What we first coact is what's most known to us, huh?

[27:48] Now, sometimes I come back to this when I'm talking about at the beginning of Book Beta or Book Three, Aristotle talks about the need for dialectica before we can discover wisdom. And why is that necessary in wisdom? And why was it necessary in the eight books of Natural Hearing or the first book of the Peri Hermeneias and so on to have dialectic before you could find or discover the truth?

[28:28] But in geometry, you can discover without dialectica. Well, it's connected with what's shown here that natural philosophy is much more difficult than geometry, and wisdom is also much more difficult than

[28:48] geometry, but not for the same reason, huh? Wisdom is more difficult than geometry because the weakness of our mind, and natural philosophy is more difficult than geometry because of the defect of the thing; it's hardly being actual.

[29:18] And connected with that is the need for dialectica in both natural philosophy and wisdom, and of course the fact that people will guess different and even contrary things. In natural philosophy, about these things that are hard to know, right? And again, in wisdom, right? Where in geometry, even before the theorem has been proven with necessity, we tend to, for the most part, anyway, we tend to guess the same thing, right?

[29:49] So, one of my great discoveries in geometry is that the is the proof that the interior the the angles of an equilateral triangle are equal. How did I prove that? I proved it by means of number five, right? Okay, so so number five, you can give the rigorous proof or demonstration that in an equilateral triangle the three angles would be equal. But if you had asked me, you know, years ago, before I ever studied Euclid, what do you think about you know what equilateral triangle is and so on, yeah?

[30:26] And do you think those angles would be equal or unequal? I'd probably say I think they'd be equal. That's what I'd imagine, right? But even the theorem five there about the isosceles triangle, I'd probably guess that those angles are equal. I mean, some people are guessing they're equal, and some that they'd be unequal, right? But some people are guessing that God is, and some that God is not, and some are guessing that water is the first matter, and some are guessing, you know, air, and some, and they all seem to have some kind of a reason, right?

[30:52] So, in geometry, you don't have this dialectical reasoning from probable opinions to contradictory conclusions, but you have it in natural philosophy, you have it in in wisdom, and that's a sign again of the truth of what Aristotle is saying here, right? Men

[31:11] reason out contradictory conclusions or reason to contradictory conclusions in those two things because there is some difficulty in knowing these things, right? More so than in geometry, but the difficulty has a different cause in both. Okay. So, in physical things, you deal with substances, and in geometry, you deal with accidents, which are less. But it's because of the mode in which they exist that it is.

[31:42] But geometry is more knowable because of the. Yeah, you've got objects that are more actual than the objects studied in natural philosophy, right? And therefore, they're easier to know than those things, but they're proportioned to us because they're they're imaginable, right? And the proper object of our reason is the what it is of something sensed or imagined, so it's right in our level, right? But in the case of natural philosophy, these things are somewhat below the level of our mind.

[32:14] In the case of wisdom, they're above our mind. But. They're being below. Is that their way of existing? Yeah, they're less actual. Are they moving or something? Yeah, they're more potential. You said, huh? And I say, book nine helps you see that better, right? Because book nine, you see that. Something is knowable to the extent it is an act, right? Because in some way the the substances are have more act than accidents.

[32:48] Yeah, of course. There's another things to consider there too, huh? That what's more sensible is more known to us, right? But they have less being, huh? Yeah, that's that's another thing to take into account. Because in geometry, you're considering about the accident of quantity. Yeah, yeah, but you're not you're not you have to go to the substance, right?

[33:15] Okay, so it's all on the surface there, right? That's why in geometry you can know the cause before the effect. So I can, when straight lines intersect, these angles are equal, right? But why? Well, because when a straight line meets a straight line, it makes angles equal to right angles, and then you've got that same thing double. So these two must be equal to those two, and you just drop out the common one; the remainders must be equal.

[33:45] You know the theorem, right? But you know what the lines intersecting are straight in a way before you know those angles must be equal, and you proceed from the cause to the effect. But because this is all on the level of what accidents, right? Considered in a kind of abstract way, and normally, though, for our mind, we know effects, huh, which are more sensible than causes. So geometry is, in a sense, a kind of exception to the rule that the cause is less known to us than the effect.

[34:21] For the most part, the effect is more known to us than the cause, and so every time we ask why, we're have a sign that the effect is maybe known, and the cause is still what unknown, right?

[34:41] So. So that's why you don't use dialectic in your beginning? Yeah, Now now you could you could answer another thing, give another reason too, or partial reason, and that is, as Dionysius to point out to me, imagination is sort of the disposer for discovery, right? The man who can imagine, you know, imaginative can discover things, and that's why in experimental science, you know, Einstein says the hypotheses are gotten by what imagination, and they have to be checked and so on.

[35:20] But of course, in geometry, you resolve to the imagination. That's the end. Where by you judge these things, and so imaginable things lend themselves to discovery more than things that cannot be imagined. Okay.

[35:43] So it's much more difficult to discover the nature of God or an angel or the soul or anything else that cannot be imagined than it is to discover something that can be what easily imagined.

[35:57] So that's another reason why you know geometry is much more certain and much easier to discover things tied up with imagination, is much more adequate to that thing. When the other sciences you're dealing with things that cannot be imagined, and Weizsäcker, the Heisenberg's pupil, there, who has some interesting things to say under the influence of Heisenberg, Kind of went off the deep end, I guess. But anyway, he made a very interesting statement that when you imagine something, you make it actual in your imagination, and there's a certain danger, therefore, when you try to imagine ability, you tend to make actual what is in it only an ability.

[36:42] and that's what happens to the Greek philosophers. You can see they're doing that, and what you know Locke does when he tries to imagine the general idea of triangle, you know, is containing in some way a particular kind of triangle, and it's, kind of a mishmash of it. He's trying to imagine them as being actually in there.

[37:04] So the imagination is a cause of deception. But basically, the reason why these natural things are difficult to know is in them because they're not very actual; they hardly what exist. Now, sometimes in explaining this to the students, I take a little parallel to human beings and understanding of human beings. I think most of us experience that we find some people hard to understand. In their behavior, but that we can understand most easily, people who are just like ourselves.

[37:52] But people who are more reasonable than we are, right, or people who are less reasonable than we are, we find more difficult to understand them.

[38:08] So somebody was saying to me the other day, you know, I don't see why people are, you know, getting on drugs all the time, right? It's not a very reasonable thing to do. This new drug out there, methods, whatever it is, you know, it's amazing how these things spread around. But you can pick up the newspaper every day, and you see people doing very unreasonable things. Why do they do that?

[38:31] Now, the cause of the difficulty that you have in understanding them is really in them, because if they have little or no reason for what they're doing, how can they resist being understood, right? but something is understandable because they're reasonable, and and these people aren't very reasonable. They live by imagination or passion or something, or drugs or whatever it is, and it's hard to understand them. But there, the difficulty is because they're below you.

[39:06] They the difficulty is in them, right? Now you go up to the to the abbey there, and they're praying the hours and so on. See, they do this day in day out, year after year. It's hard to understand anybody can put up with that,

[39:28] but these people are more reasonable in their choice of life than I am. So the cause of the difficulty I have in understanding these people is in me, right? I

[39:44] see. And sometimes you find somebody who finds you hard to understand, right? But often because you are more reasonable than they are, right? And

[40:04] I was talking to a historian one time, you know, and his specialty was Arabic history, right? And in order to be a specialist in Arabic history, he had to learn Arabic, which is a difficult language for us to learn. And he said to me, he didn't know what motivated him to study Arabic and learn it. See, so it was why specialized in Arabic history. He doesn't quite know why, you know.

[40:40] I was talking to another historian, and his specialty was Restoration England. You know what Restoration England is? I said, "No. Well, why did you, why do you study Restoration England in particular? Is that the most important period of history, the most interesting, or you know? " Well, when I was in college, I had a course in Restoration England, and it was very good. You know, I got interested in it, right?

[41:02] It just kind of happened, right? If you had a course in in Napoleonic France, maybe you would have got interested in that or something else, right? And so I find that people I run into in the academic world don't seem to have much reason for what they study. You know, you know, Should you study Restoration England, or should you study Arabic history. You know, well, I don't know exactly why I'm studying one rather than the other.

[41:32] You know, and run into the English professor there. He's working on Titus Andronicus, that disgusting play. Why are you wasting your time on that? You know, well, hasn't been much written on it, and therefore he can publish more easily on it or something. You know, everybody else is trying to write something on Hamlet, but haven't much reason to spend your time studying this disgusting play, isn't it?

[42:05] And people, you're always writing. people, you know, in graduate school, writing on some obscure figure because nobody else has written on them yet, and so people don't seem to have much reason for what they're doing, and therefore it's hard to understand why they're doing what they're doing because they don't have much reason themselves to explain why they did it, and you know. But then, as I say, there are people who are more reasonable than you, and have very good reasons for what they're doing.

[42:38] Well, then the difficulty is really in you because you're not such a reasonable person as you might have thought yourself to be. Do you see that? That's a little parallel, you see, the analogy here. The difficulty can be in us in trying to understand something, or in the thing we're trying to understand, and so. But Aristotle saying the difficulty seems to be the cause of difficulty seems to be even more in us than in the thing because the things that are most knowable in themselves seem to be what least known to us, so the chief difficulty in knowing is in us,

[43:22] and then he makes that beautiful comparison. Apparently, Aristotle thought that the reason why the bat flies at night, which I guess they do, don't they, more so than during the day, yeah, and I don't know if this is true biologically or not. But the likeness there makes sense, if the bat, if you assume that the bat flies during the night, because the light of day is too bright for it,

[43:49] then a sort of likeness to that in the condition of our mind, right? That, and Aristotle sees a proportion. In that case, then our mind is to knowing the immaterial substances, saying God Himself, something like the bat is to the light of day. It's too bright for him, and Scripture, you know, speaks something like this and says, God dwells in light inaccessible, right? As Thomas says in the after communion prayer, "Lux vera, the true light.

[44:23] This is the true light which enlightens every man. " But this true light is, but difficult for us to understand. It dwells in light inaccessible. So the chief difficulty then is in our mind. But it's a beautiful proportion that Aristotle has here, and in some ways it's better than Plato's proportion that we're like those born in the cave, right? Because that seems to be a kind of what temporary thing, right?

[44:52] It's a little bit like the example there, where if you ever go into a movie in a movie theater on a bright summer afternoon, and you come out and you are kind of what blinded, it's a sort of a temporary thing, right? While the bat, it seems to be by nature the bat can't withstand the night of day, huh?

[45:16] my cousin tells me I guess in the old days they used to have lovers' seats, you know, in the theaters. It's like it's like a double seat you sit through girl there and watch the movie. I guess they cut that out and then, like this we have. But he describes going in on a bright summer afternoon, right, into the theater. Now it's universally right. Now it's hard to see what's in the theater because and the difficulty of seeing is not in the weakness of your eyes, but in the lack of light inside the theater.

[45:51] And some lady was sitting in one of these double seats. I guess she was a little room to spread out a bit, and he sat down next to her. You know, ah, getting up. You know, well, this is this is the difficulty is in the thing. So the difficulty in seeing and going from a bright summer afternoon into the theater is in the theater, right? But coming out of the theater, it's in you.

[46:15] But both of those examples being more temporary, not as good an example maybe as as the bat, assuming that the bat flies at night because it's too bright for him during the day. It's probably more true of owls. Maybe so. Yeah. But I think the bat, flies at night because it's prey flies at night, Yeah, yeah. and it uses sound. Aristotle is kind of trying to see is the nature of our mind, right, to find these things difficult to see.

[46:42] They're too great for our mind. So this is a severe warning, right now, right? The difficulty we're going to have in knowing the things that are most knowable. Because it won't go away, the problem. Yeah, yeah. So. Likewise, he says in the proportion, the nous, the understanding of our soul, towards the things that are by nature, or simply speaking, the most clear of all. Right.

[47:15] You see that now in the. This is about ability and act, but also if you say that the. It's the cause that makes known and clarifies, right?

[47:32] The effect, right? We tend to know the effect in a kind of dark way before we know the cause. But we go from darkness to light.

[47:49] Now, you can see everything up to this point is kind of an unfolding of the original what statement that the knowledge of or consideration of truth is in one way difficult, another way easy. Right. But the emphasis in unfolding that statement, as regards the knowing of the truth being easy, was.

[48:19] In what way is it easy, right? And he gives the three ways it's easy, right? But the emphasis in seeing the difficulty or considering it being difficult was not that it is difficult because that kind of stands out, but why is difficult, right? And he gives the two causes of difficulty. And then the.

[48:46] Which one is a greater one for us, right? And that reminds me, you know, of the question, the article, and the first question of the Summa.

[49:01] Whether sacred scripture should use metaphor. Remember that. And one objection says that, well, metaphor is characteristic of the poet. And poetry is infima doctrina, the lowest, teaching. And why should sacred scripture, which is the supreme teaching, use what the lowest one uses? Right. And Thomas, if you know the reply to that objection, says, "Well,

[49:42] there is something they have in common. " Hence, they both use metaphors, but in another way, it's just for the reverse reason that they both use metaphors, huh? And they both use metaphors because it is something not proportioned to our mind, huh? But in the case of the poet. It's below our mind, not quite understandable, right? In the case of sacred scripture, it's something above our mind, right?

[50:16] And so the metaphors in sacred scripture are bringing something down to our level, right? The Lord is my rock, right? Well, a rock is something you can rest upon, and so on, right? And or the Lord is my shepherd, or something, right? You're trying to bring God down, you know, to our level, right? So we can grasp in some imperfect way. But the metaphors of the poet are bringing something what up and making it more intelligible than it is.

[50:52] Of course, you see this elsewhere in fiction. You know how a good a good play should have a plot, obviously, and the plot should have a beginning, middle, and end. And if you know connection between before and after, and beginning, middle, and end, you can see you're making life more reasonable than it is, more orderly than it is, because life is not a beginning, middle, and end.

[51:15] It seems to be, you know, exposition of of things. So during your your your day, you might do things that have no connection one with the other. But the events inside the play have a beginning, middle, and end. So you're giving life an intelligibility that doesn't really have. And you have something like that in the other arts because,

[51:44] example, I was using the other day there, the great portrait artist like Titian, huh? He tries to in the portrait of the great man capture his whole character in one expression, and therefore he's trying to give an expression in the man's face that reveals more than any one expression in daily life that a photograph might capture would would really do. So you're making an expression on the face have more meaning than an expression real life does.

[52:14] I think that's what's really appropriate to the fine arts that they bring things up. In the same way, you know, you we talked the other day about how Mozart says that in the opera, you know, the words must be altogether the obedient servant of the music. Whatever the situation is that's going to give rise to this aria or this ensemble, Mozart seems to be giving it more meaning, huh?

[52:37] And I know when I listen to Mozart, I hear all the meaning in Mozart, and I go over and blather to Kasurik about it. He says, "Duane you think there's more intelligibility than there is there, right? " But he's always kind of tempting you, you know, to to want to try to put into words what the music is saying, you know, but the music isn't quite saying it.

[52:58] But he's raising up the emotions and giving them a meaning that the emotions don't seem to have quite in life, huh? Yeah, that's what Thomas says about the metaphor is the poet.

[53:14] So, in those use of the metaphor, it kind of corresponds to this, right? In one case, you have something difficult to know, but the difficulty is in the thing itself, and use the metaphor to try to bring it up to a little more,

[53:29] you know. And like in those ones in Macbeth, right, Life's a walking shadow, a poor player that frets and struts his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. Tis a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, sing by nothing. The chaos of life, he's giving a little more what intelligibility by those likenesses than than it really has. So that distinction Thomas makes, you know, has connection with what Aristotle was saying here.

[54:04] The metaphor is there because of something difficult to understand, but for different reasons, right? And therefore, the poet is using the metaphor for a different reason, in a way, than the the second writer is. But there is something about in both cases a difficulty there, something beyond our reason. Not so understandable, huh? Okay? My old friend Jim used to say, you know, women love to be told, "I can't understand you.

[54:34] " You know, you're amazing. Might comprehend you, see? But why is that? You know, you know Shakespeare's Cymbeline there. You know, I don't know the play Cymbeline right, but the queen is finally revealed at the end as being a very evil woman, and you know all the things she was plotting and so on. And the king who didn't didn't know her, he says, "Who is it can read a woman?

[55:07] Who is it that can read a woman? Who is it that can understand a woman? " Right? It's that interpretation that Thomas talks about, right? Who can really understand a woman? But is the cause of the difficulty we have in understanding the woman in us, which case should be a very superior creature, or is it in her?

[55:27] You see, so I just kind of just a joke about it because because Jim was pretty you know knowledgeable about women, right? And and he realized that they love to be told, you know, I can't quite understand you, you know, you're amazing woman. And but is is it the you know is that a compliment or something else? Well, this year you can you can raise interesting questions about these these matters of life.

[55:54] Someone say that poetry kind of reveals the meaning that we don't. It what? It reveals the meaning that maybe is hidden to us in life. Yeah, we can't. I don't know whether Providence or something. We know another thing about about Shakespeare's plays, and I was mentioning the the characters there, and Mrs. Jamieson's book on on the female characters of Shakespeare. But just you know, when I recall my mind, you know, I think of Othello, or I think of Hamlet, I think of Macbeth.

[56:26] People say these guys seem to stand out in a way that the people you meet in daily life don't, huh? In other words, you two guys are not as distinct in my mind as Othello and Macbeth, or Othello and King Lear, right? So in some way, these characters are more sharply drawn and more distinct, and therefore more knowable than the characters I meet in real life.

[56:56] And in the same way, you know, as I mentioned, Mrs. Jamieson there talks about different kinds of female characters in Shakespeare, and she brings them out. And again, these women, I'm in love with all of them, most of them. You know, I'd love to have married to Desdemona, you know, or to Portia, or one of these women, you know. But all these women seem much more distinct than the women I've known in life.

[57:19] They're much more distinct, one from another. Desdemona and Portia and all these wonderful women. So, and so he's made characters something more intelligible than characters in real life, right? Isn't it? I suppose there's, you know, some strange inconsistencies in people you meet, right? That makes them kind of unintelligible, right? But they're not as as precisely drawn in life as they are in the plays. So you see what you're doing there, right?

[57:55] You're making things more intelligible than they are. The plot does so because the plot has beginning, middle, and life doesn't seem to have the beginning, middle, and end, huh? And and the metaphors, do this as Thomas says in the first question of the first question of the Summa this is really quite a text, you know, for understanding other things as well as as this. But as I mentioned before,

[58:30] the. The reasons that Aristotle gives for doing dialectic in the beginning of Book Three might seem to be relevant to discovery everywhere, and they're not, it seems to me, to geometry. See, and Aristotle doesn't give the reason why, but the reason is here in a sense. It's because of the difficulty in natural philosophy that you don't have in geometry, and because the difficulty in wisdom you don't have in geometry, although the causes of the difficulty are different, right?

[59:11] But that's behind the reason why dialectic is necessary in those two, and also ethics for that matter. I warned you about that because Aristotle doesn't always unfold, you know, make explicit everything.

[59:31] I think I mentioned how I was studying the first reading of the Natural Hearing there the proemium Aristotle is giving the reason, as you know, why we should go from the general to particular, and the reason seems to be, you know, because of our mind. You see, well, then why would it be just as applicable to geometry or to wisdom or any other part of philosophy, right?

[1:00:04] This is the way the human mind works. It sees things in a confused way before it sees them distinctly, and the general is in particular as confused as distinct. Why shouldn't this characterize every science? Why should this be the premium to natural philosophy, not the premium to every science? And and our professor was mentioning how how wisdom tends to go from the less universal to more universal, and geometry goes another way, you know, simple to the composed and equal before the unequal.

[1:00:34] But the reason Aristotle gives there seems to fit any science because it seems to be what based on reason, which is common to all, right?

[1:00:51] Well, I would refer you to Thomas's commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, right, where Boethius says that natural philosophy precedes rationabiliter, and mathematics precedes disciplinabiliter, and so on, wisdom intellectualiter. But when Thomas explains what it means to say that natural philosophy precedes rationabiliter, and he distinguishes the various senses of rationabiliter, but the sense in which natural philosophy precedes rationabiliter is that it most of all what follows the natural way of reason, huh?

[1:01:37] Which is to learn from the senses which is to learn from the senses, and so on. So you got to kind of bring that in as a reason why what is characteristic of reason is especially found in what natural philosophy. So you know, so a bit like that. To say you've got to give a reason here why that this is about dialectic is is not found in geometry.

[1:02:07] Now, there's a second thing that. Aristotle is going to do here, and it's connected with what's been said so far. But it's looking now at how one man is helped by another man, right, towards the truth, right? And this is kind of going to be unfolded in itself, but somewhat implicit in saying, you know, oh, you can get a lot of truth through the efforts of many men, and so on.

[1:02:33] Okay. But this is connected with how man is towards knowing the truth, right? How one man helps another man towards the truth. Very important.

[1:02:51] So this begins at line eleven. There at the end, It says, "one ought to have thanks is just, huh? Ought to give thanks, not only with those with whom we what shared something we had in common, some position, but also to those speaking more what superficially on the on the surface, huh?

[1:03:21] For these also contributed, right? For they gave us the what habit and exercised our mind, huh? That's what he's saying here, huh? And this might be touching upon the discussion of the will as well, gratitude, right? You know, I'm grateful to De Koninck and Dion and so on, these men from whom I learned much, huh? But Aristotle's saying is just to be grateful, not only to those with whom one got some part of the truth, or some big part of the truth, but also with those that one might have disagreed with, right?

[1:03:59] But in trying to argue against them, refute them, we developed our what mind, huh? So I'm helped towards the the truth not only by the bits of truth I got from other men, but in some way by even their errors, huh? More superficial, superficial thoughts, right? Because the refutation of an error is a what a help, right? Okay.

[1:04:26] Now seeing that, huh? You know, De Koninck's refutation there of Descartes about the confused and distinct made me understand much more this confused and distinct distinction there in the beginning of natural philosophy. I've often said to people, you know, a quantum leap, you know, in understanding of these things. It was like a new, a whole new understanding of it, huh? So I profited from reasoning against Descartes, and I profited reasoning against other people and refuting certain errors, huh?

[1:04:55] So Aristotle's saying what has helped both by those who what one gets some part of the truth from, but also from those one might have disagreed with, or from even their errors, because. Your mind was exercised in what refuting it, right? That's what Augustine says, you know, in theology there that heresies are necessary for the development of what theology, right? And in the patristic period, you have so many books, you know, contra so and so against so and so, you know.

[1:05:27] And so this guy denied an article of the faith, and so the church fathers were forced to defend the article of the faith and to refute that error, and that's how they came into a what a better what knowledge of that particular at least article of the faith. So when Augustine was refuting the Pelagians and something like that, he came to a better understanding of grace, right?

[1:05:54] So in a way, he's indebted to the Pelagians for a better understanding of grace, and not only to Ambrose from whom he got parts of the truth at least, but also he's indebted to the Pelagians in another way, right? Okay. And the martyrs would be indebted to their persecutors. In another way, yeah. Okay.

[1:06:19] Now the example that he gives here from music is kind of strange at first sight, right? Why of all the arts should he have taken music, huh? Because

[1:06:39] he wants to illustrate or to witness here exemplify the dependence of one man upon another man, right? For the perfection of his knowledge, right?

[1:06:57] But why take music? Why don't take geometry or something like that, right? Or philosophy of nature, something like that. Now we tend to think of poets are more what

[1:07:12] born with the natural gift than taught, right? And music is named from what the muses, right? So if anybody's inspired by the muses rather than learning from another man, it's the what musician, right? a fortiori. And so you know what Mozart said, you know, if writing melodies doesn't come to you as easy as a cow's piddling, he says, don't bother, he says. You see, you see this natural gift in Mozart or other musicians, right?

[1:07:46] And you might say, well, these guys are taught by nature; they're not taught by other men, and they don't learn from other men, right? You see. So if even the musician depends upon other men for the development of his art and so on, a fortiori in these other more teachable right things, huh? He gives an example here of Timotheus, who apparently was Alexander the Great's favorite musician, and uh was it Dryden there in the feast, as Timotheus playing music in front of Alexander.

[1:08:22] He plays one kind of music, and Alexander knows he rather feels like he's back in battle. And then he puts on a more lascivious melody, and and Alexander's relaxed, and you know, brings around the girl around him, and he's kind of putting the hands. So, we don't know too much about these guys, but he's saying Timotheus would not have been, if this lesser guy Phrynis had not been first, right, or Phrynis.

[1:08:47] I don't pronounce his name right. And so, I take usually as an example at this point Mozart, right? Huh? You see, and Mozart said, you know, years later there, when he dedicated the six quartets to Haydn, you know, I had to dedicate them to Haydn because he taught me how to really write the what, quartet, huh? And Einstein talks about the influence of Haydn's Russian quartets right One of the most tremendous impressions upon Mozart, huh?

[1:09:18] Because in the Russian quartets, I guess Haydn gave each instrument its own voice, so to speak, huh? And the possibilities, you know, Mozart had to realize them, you know, and he surpassed Haydn when he wrote those six quartets. You know, that's and when Haydn heard them, you know, he told Mozart's father, as an honest man, you know, before God, your son is the greatest composer that I know of, you know.

[1:09:43] And really, then Mozart went back and he dedicated them to Haydn, right? But the same years later, he said, "I had to do it because he taught me how to do it." So even though Mozart surpassed Haydn, and Haydn recognized that, there wouldn't have been anything like that in Mozart without Haydn, huh? But Mozart said too, in one place, you know, "There was not a master in the art of music before him whose works he had not gone through, studied many times."

[1:10:09] And when he went up and discovered the manuscripts of Johann Sebastian Bach, you know, they say he had come before him, spread around him, and he said, "Here's something you can learn something from this," you know, huh? And and you realize how much Mozart learned from Johann Christian Bach, huh? You know, his early pieces are imitations of Johann Christian Bach and so on, and kind of Johann Christian Bach was the second daddy to him.

[1:10:34] So, the and then you could take Bach himself, right? You know, us quoting the biographer of Bach who said that before he studied the works of Vivaldi, his hands taught his mind, which is sort of primitive. Afterwards, his mind taught his hands. You know, kind of beautiful way of saying how much he learned from Vivaldi, huh? Now, even if we put Johann Sebastian Bach above Vivaldi, would there have been a Johann Sebastian Bach without Vivaldi, or would there have been?

[1:11:04] You know, if we go back in time to these other earlier composers, so if even you know Mozart and these naturally gifted men, inspired by the muses, who knows where to get these melodies, if even they depend upon other men for the development of their art, a fortiori and the more teachable and and best, you know, inspired by the muses, huh? But it's very interesting. Now, let's now we take that example, you know.

[1:11:33] So some some many says we've taken certain. Positions, certain truths, and others were before them the causes of these. So let's stop there. It's noon time now, and that's the end of the first one reading, right? Okay. We want to meet this afternoon then. Okay, at the time it's